


Ace of Eyes: the Violence of Beholding in the Magnus Archives & What it Illuminates About the Paradigm of Visibility [Meta]

by osteophage



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Asexuality, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:07:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29782776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osteophage/pseuds/osteophage
Summary: Metacommentary on how the themes in TMA reflect on real-world frameworks of asexual advocacy.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Ace of Eyes: the Violence of Beholding in the Magnus Archives & What it Illuminates About the Paradigm of Visibility [Meta]

**Author's Note:**

> This work is being posted to AO3 for the [March Meta Matters Challenge](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/March_Meta_Matters_Challenge). It was originally posted to [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1919206) on Dec 8, 2020.

For some time now, I have been trying to [make this case](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/593258) about [the visibility paradigm](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/583267) \-- so when I started listening to The Magnus Archives, a horror anthology that I dare say has become relatively popular among aces, I couldn't help but notice how well its plot and worldbuilding dovetailed with what I've been trying to say. 

If you're someone who's already familiar with both subjects, I expect you already know where this is going. Still, to make this post coherent for people who only know one or the other (or neither), I'm going to have a section dedicated to each of them respectively before digging into the implications. 

Spoiler warning: If you're a TMA listener who's not yet caught up to at least the start of Season 5, I would recommend listening at least that far before you continue reading. The analysis below includes specific plot points and dialogue as far as the first two arcs of the fifth season. 

If you are _not_ a TMA listener and this is the first you're hearing of it, I would recommend checking it out if you enjoy a good ghost story. It's narrated by a character who's organizing the records at a paranormal research institute, following a sort of episodic monster-of-the-week type of format, and you can find [the first episode here on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdiUHYacaRI). 

#### "Visibility" in Asexual Spectrum Advocacy

What I'm calling the visibility paradigm is identifiable by either of two features: 1) the use of **"visibility" as a key term** to name a desired status, practice, or advocacy goal, and 2) **the emphasis on "awareness"** or information- & attention-based advocacy, which essentially treats social problems as a lack of information.

In the ace community, the visibility paradigm has been everywhere from the beginning. It's featured in the name of the [Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN)](http://wiki.asexuality.org/AVEN) and the trainwreck that was ["Ace Visibility Day,"](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1244291) especially what with its emphasis on [trending tags](https://www.disruptingdh.com/politics-of-visibility/). Since visibility and awareness are sometimes treated as synonymous, I would also point to the original name for [Asexual Awareness Week](https://www.aceweek.org/the-history-of-ace-week) for a third example. In fact, the choice to [rename the event to Ace Week](https://www.aceweek.org/stories/name-change) was even motivated, in part, by an intent to broaden its scope out of this awareness-based paradigm.

Although I'll be focusing on the ace community here, the same or similar paradigms can also be identified among other groups -- ex. [Bi Visibility Day](https://bivisibilityday.com/) and [Transgender Day of Visibility](http://tdov.org/).

For the record, the [general "awareness" approach to advocacy](https://www.thecut.com/2014/07/awareness-is-overrated.html) has been [critiqued on several grounds](https://ssir.org/articles/entry/stop_raising_awareness_already) \-- including real-world cases where bringing too much attention to an issue has actually provoked backlash and made the issue worse -- but for the purposes of this argument I'll be digging specifically into the theme of "visibility" itself.

#### "Beholding" in The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Archives explores a wide range of fears, each referred to by certain names in order to categorize them and the most narratively significant of these is known variously as the Eye, Beholding, Ceaseless Watcher, or It Knows You. Although "visibility" itself is not a key word in the story, more general sight-based metaphors of knowledge & perception are the hallmark of the Eye, and so in this section, I'm explaining what that entails for the story in terms of linking visibility to violence. **Although seeing and being seen aren't framed as _inherently_ bad things in TMA, they are played for horror** in a variety of ways.

To be clear, what I'm calling "the Eye" here is not the name of an individual character, monster, or type of creature in the story; it's more of a general category term for a type of fear itself, predicated on sight and knowledge. The discomfort of being watched, the terror of paranoia, the fear of having your secrets exposed -- these are all grouped under the Eye. To be a victim of the Eye is to be seen, watched, and known in violating ways. To be an agent of the Eye means to stare, to intrude, to push and probe past the boundaries of what people are willing to reveal. This definition of the Eye is something explicitly stated in the text (TMA 111), but it's also something depicted through the character of Jonathan Sims, who becomes an expression of the Eye. After the awakening and discovery of his new supernatural gifts, **Jon is dragged into a corruption arc that demonstrates the Eye's potential for psychological violence,** and at multiple points in the story, there are moments when _not_ using these powers is framed as an important moral imperative.

One of the earliest of Jon's powers to emerge is the power of compulsion: **whenever he asks someone a question, that itself can compel them to answer him truthfully, even against their will.** This isn't exclusively played for horror, but it can be leveraged in exploitative or disturbing ways. In TMA 103, for instance, he uses this power to force someone to tell him a secret and then immediately use that secret to blackmail him. In TMA 91, this power is why Daisy takes Jon out into the woods with the intent to kill him, viewing him as a monster, too dangerous to be allowed to live. When Basira challenges her and tells her to let him go, Daisy shoots back, "You don't know what he _is_. You don't know what it's like to have your secrets pulled out like _teeth_ , just because he asked."

At that point in the story, Jon has been built up as a relatively sympathetic character and it's hard to see Daisy's side of things, but in a way, she was right to fear him. When the Eye really gets its hooks in him, Jon begins deliberately preying on people. This is revealed in TMA 142, where we learn about how Jon approached a total stranger in public and then compelled her to tell him about a personal traumatic experience against her will. This is all relayed from the woman's own point of view, and **her account of what Jon did to her -- and her subsequent nightmares about him -- unambiguously frames his actions as predatory and violating.**

What's worse, this wasn't even a one-off behavior, but rather a pattern of predatory extraction. In TMA 146, a group of other characters conspire to confront him about what they've learned from the woman's report, which is when they learn that he's done this to other people as well. Basira tells him outright, **"You're a danger, Jon. A monster. You're hurting innocent people."** Jon's only defense is that he finds it difficult not to. Later, though, he seems to recognize his actions as wrong and even thanks Martin for arranging the "intervention" (TMA 154). Without question, these moments frame this use of his powers as something cruel and abhorrent, something ethically important to avoid. 

This relationship established between the Eye & traumatic intrusion has **a particular resonance for the ace community** given that we're introduced to it through **the format of questions**. In ace circles, [it's a known problem](https://www.reddit.com/r/Asexual/comments/jyyza4/coming_out_as_asexual_involves_a_lot_of_invasive/) that when we disclose our identities, we have to brace for invasive questions from people who think any mention of asexuality is grounds to ask things like "Do you masturbate?" or "Did something happen to you?" 

It's significant, then, that The Magnus Archives depicts intrusive questioning as as itself a basis of horror stories.

 **While Jon's powers aren't exclusively used for violence, that doesn't diminish the overarching theme of their violating nature and the emphasis on restraint.** There are times when Jon's supernatural ability to see/know things has been useful for his figurative and literal navigation of the story, so the moral weight of it is clearly context-dependent and situational. Even so, it's hammered home that those closest to him want him to respect their boundaries, which means trusting Jon _not_ to turn his "gaze" on them, as expressed in this scene from TMA 177:

> Basira: What's it like? ...Being with someone who can see the inside of your head.
> 
> Martin: Hm? Oh -- oh, no, he doesn't. I told him not to, and so he tries to... "look away"...?
> 
> Basira: And you trust him to do that?

All of this -- from these characters' aversion to being "looked" at to the nightmares inflicted on Jon's victims to his struggle to rise above the urge -- paints a clear picture of what we're supposed to think of Jon's powers, the Eye, and what it does to people. Visibility is vulnerability. There are some things you _don't_ want to catch the attention of. Although the Eye is easy to underestimate compared to other, more physical threats like the Desolation or the Slaughter, it is still a source of deep psychological horror and a force to be reckoned with.

But even with that theme in play, I can't tell you how funny it was to me when I found out the story even included a _literal_ panopticon.

#### The Panopticon: Technologies of Surveillance

[The panopticon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon) is the name for the idea of a particular type of prison designed by Jeremy Bentham. The name of it comes from "opt," as in optical, for sight/seeing, and "pan," as in "all." Ergo a panopticon features a central guard tower from which the guards can see all, without being seen themselves.

Whether or not the particular blueprint would work is beside the point, because the idea has taken on a life of its own as a way of [naming and critiquing](https://www.themantle.com/philosophy/visibility-trap-body-cameras-and-panopticon-police-power) the [technologies of surveillance](https://doi.org/10.1080/10841806.2017.1381482) \-- [often quoting](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1846457) Michel Foucault's famous line from _Discipline and Punish:_ ["visibility is a trap."](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/558956)

This is the entire area of political critique being summoned when you invoke the term "panopticon."

In the Magnus Archives, the Panopticon is a real, literal building, and "a significant site of power for the Beholding" (TMA 158). Its central tower is a place from which the Eye can see everything; all are subject to its gaze. After the Change, subsequent episodes depict the horror of the Eye in terms of countless cameras, mass surveillance, staring eyes growing in the walls, and constant, inescapable judgement, never allowing its victims a moment of privacy or peace.

#### Revisiting the Visibility Paradigm

 **At the affective level, a close examination of these themes should illuminate the wider range of emotional impact that can come of being "seen."** The particular fantastical worldbuilding of TMA may not be real, but it represents something that is. It does thing to a person when you're [bracing yourself for constant scrutiny](https://theacetheist.wordpress.com/2019/09/19/the-glossary-the-gristmill/), and as Vesper and others have pointed out, [idolizing "visibility" is grossly negligent of its potential consequences](https://queerascat.tumblr.com/post/165479107291/for-the-longest-time-it-struck-me-as-odd-the-way). These risks are something that need to be taken into account from the start of any advocacy campaign -- risks that can be mitigated, but only if it occurs to you to strategize around them in the first place, something that you cannot do if you're treating "visibility" as inherently good. 

For the pinnacle of the visibility paradigm in action, just look to[ the "Fly the Flag" campaign](https://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/2019/06/07/reject-alcohol-sponsorship/) last year, which tried to combine superficial "activism" with alcohol sponsorship. What exactly did it get us? Attention? Yeah, attention in the form of incredulous reactions and a swarm of hostile twitter comments. You know what's a great place to try and change someone's mind on a topic like this? [_Not Twitter_](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/twitters-harassment-problem-is-baked-into-its-design/542952/) _,_ I tell you that. 

Not everything that gets referred to as "visibility" is that ill-advised, but **as paradigm of advocacy, it does invite disadvantageous thinking that overemphasizes getting "seen" over all else**. Between stuff like this (hashtags, beer ads) and the [less flashy](https://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/2020/12/02/carnival-of-aces-invisible-activism/), more directly useful kinds of work -- like [the census](https://asexualcensus.wordpress.com/), [RFAS](http://asexualsurvivors.org/), and [the DSM Taskforce](https://rotten-zucchinis.tumblr.com/post/125907513485/how-the-dsm-sort-of-came-to) \-- I'd gladly take the latter. Note this doesn't mean there's no point in outreach; it means that outreach should be _done well_ instead of treated like it's a straightforward equation of the more eyes, the better.

 **Given these considerations, "visibility" is an insufficient metric for advocacy.** Visibility, visual identifiability, and the status of being "seen" (literally or figuratively) can actually play out in a wide range of ways, both positive and negative, which is why we need frameworks that more precisely distinguish between acceptance, support, vulnerability, and violence.


End file.
